


One More Atmosphere

by sheafrotherdon



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Episode Tag, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-15
Updated: 2006-05-15
Packaged: 2017-10-11 23:38:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/118417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set immediately after <em>Grace Under Pressure</em>.  There's something John's been meaning to say, and Rodney's not sure he wants to hear it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One More Atmosphere

Rodney arranges his laptops in formation – a broken set of battlements ranged between him and the door. He can still bring to mind the look Sheppard threw him in the jumper; the way Sheppard stared in the infirmary, as if there was something he absolutely had to say but couldn't figure out how. In consequence, he's been expecting the sound of footsteps for nearly three hours, anticipating the momentary hush outside his quarters that indicates someone's debating the merits of knocking, and he isn't surprised when the door slides open and Sheppard steps inside. Ask forgiveness, not permission – John Sheppard's philosophy of life, fortune cookie trite.

"Rodney?"

"Hmmm?" He imagines Sheppard just narrowed his eyes, but doesn't look up from his laptop to be sure.

"You're supposed to be resting."

"Yes, well." Rodney glances from one screen to the next, checks the rate at which the naquada generators are feeding power into the secondary support systems. "There's a lot to catch up on."

Sheppard shifts. "Nothing that can't wait."

He'd known this was coming, retreated to his quarters as Carson had ordered simply to delay the inevitable. He idly wonders how long Sheppard searched the labs, the mess hall, the routing stations and duct work, expecting Rodney to disregard medical advice as he usually did. Rodney almost smiles at the thought, and taps a rapid string of numbers into laptop three.

"Rodney."

Jesus, how he hates that low, pleading tone of voice. "Perhaps it's nothing that couldn't wait if I were _you_ , Lieutenant Colonel Please Let Me Shoot Things, but for those of us making a – how shall we say – more vital, even _intellectual_ contribution to the success of this venture, nothing could be further from the truth."

It's Sheppard's turn to say nothing at all.

With a pang of disquiet, Rodney becomes aware of the thousand microfractures threaded through his self-control; fissures that weaken the seams of his coping, anger seeping into the hollow spaces behind his ribs. He'll break if Sheppard stays. Without looking up, he reaches for his coffee cup. "So, if you'd be kind enough to leave . . . "

John steps closer. "I'd never leave you behind, Rodney."

There it is – the thing Sheppard's been waiting to say. "What?" Rodney's head snaps up faster than it should given the cut on his temple, and pain clouds his vision. He shakes his head to clear his thoughts; finds it almost amusing to contemplate the earnest expression on Sheppard's face when he looks up again.

"I'd never leave you behind."

Rodney laughs, but even he can hear that the resonance is wrong, that the waves of sound are twisted and corrupted, that the differential equation of his intent has died and mirth is spinning quickly into panic. "I know that," he manages, bringing himself under control, each word precise and clipped.

"Rodney."

"I _know_ that." Matter into matter – anger becomes flint, the edge of his words polished like blades.

John sets his hands on the edge of the desk and leans across the laptops that were never much of a defense. "I'd never leave you behind."

Rodney's felt rage before, but this is something new – primal, elemental, a creature from the darkest places inside him that has no intention of remaining caged. He pushes back his chair, sick and satisfied when it crashes to the floor, scattering papers in the wake of his hands, breathing hard. "Take your platitudes somewhere else, Colonel."

"I said – "

" _I heard what you said._ " He's rounded the desk before he's aware of the impulse, jamming a finger into the center of John's chest and hissing his fury. "Save your breath!" He steels himself, knows what's coming before the words are spoken.

"I'd never leave you behind."

" _Don't_." Rodney shoves at him, hard – forces him one step back. "Save that macho, Air Force, flyboy _bullshit_ for someone who _gives a fucking damn_."

"I'd – "

" _I said don't_." The broken hull of his indifference is flooded now, anger washing through his lungs, surging through the ventricles of his heart. He's panting as though he's run the circumference of the city, fingers curled tight, half-moons of steadying pain pressed into the palms of his hand. "I don't need to know! It makes no difference."

"Yes it does."

" _No it doesn't_."

"Trust me."

 _What?_ " _Fuck you_. Were you at the bottom of the _fucking_ ocean?"

John's face softens. "Yeah, I was." He pauses. "Looking for you."

And Rodney crumples, anger dissipating on the hitch of his breath, broken tremors spilling through his fingers. Trust's a weight to bend his spine and John catches him, steady as Rodney's knees give way beneath the pressure of one more atmosphere, salt-water sharp at the back of his throat, and this – this is drowning.

~*~

John's sure there's some technical term for this – shock, perhaps – but it doesn't seem like something Carson can fix. He murmurs nonsense as Rodney kneels and vomits all over the floor, emptying his body of isolation's poison. He leans in instinctively as Rodney begins to shiver, sets a gentle hand at the back of his neck as the heaving slows.

"Oh fuck," Rodney whispers, wiping his mouth with trembling fingers.

"You should lie down."

"Yeah." Rodney's eyes widen. "Oh God, oh God, I'm sorry, you – shouldn't have had to see that, I can - let me get something to clean that up . . . "

"Rodney."

Rodney looks at him, his mouth a thin, unhappy line.

"I'll get it. Go lie down."

John can sense Rodney hastily constructing a dozen protests, but he shakes his head and Rodney deflates; steadies himself with a hand on John's shoulder as he climbs to his feet. His acquiescence says more about how he's feeling than the vomit on the floor between them, and John feels a hollowed out empathy.

He watches until Rodney begins to unfasten his shirt, then ducks into the bathroom – finds a towel he figures can be sacrificed - and comes back to clean up what he can. Marshalling every resource he has, he refuses to consider the idea of cold, dark, isolation - rising water and a lack of air. He scrubs a little harder, sets discipline against the scattered images his brain supplies, and stubbornly does not imagine Rodney left alone with the realization that his broken intelligence is his only company.

Rodney's laying in bed by the time the mopping up's done, his back turned against the world, curled up tight as if to make himself as small a target as possible for whatever he's remembering.

"Water," John murmurs, rounding the bed and sitting beside him. "Your mouth must taste like shit, c'mon."

"I'm fine," Rodney sighs, but he props himself up on one elbow and drinks from the glass John offers. John doesn't comment on the tremor in Rodney's fingertips as he passes the tumbler back, but sets the glass down and offers a washcloth in its place. Rodney won't meet his eyes, and John doesn't try to make him. "I really am sorry about the . . . " Rodney throws the washcloth on the table beside his bed and slumps back into his pillows. "Please tell me I missed your shoes."

John smiles. "You missed my shoes."

"Thank God. Small mercies." He closes his eyes and worries his fingers one against the other, close to his chest.

"Yeah," John breathes, and stands to pull the blankets higher, seal in warmth where the memory of cold is still too strong. His fingertips brush Rodney's shoulder as he tucks a blanket close, and Rodney flinches, relaxing his face a split second later into a tight, unreadable mask.

John frowns, watches for a second, thoughts circling as if compelled by a flickering, jumbled transmission. His stomach becomes tight as supposition joins supposition, as he wonders how often Rodney's been comforted in his life. Dimming the lights, he stands for a moment, thrown off balance to imagine Rodney in the moment before a rescuing voice flared in his ear. Beyond the cold and the stutter of labored breathing, beneath the craving for one last, human touch - a hollow, sickening realization; a yearning, a life's long, gnawing ache, never to be satisfied - held at bay by sharp words and an arsenal of sarcasm, a self-sufficiency born of knowing no one would ever come.

He swallows and steps back, almost stumbles, but his fingers have already begun to unfasten the holster at his thigh. He circles the bed, leaves his weapon on the floor, and slides into the empty space at Rodney's back, boots still on, blankets rough beneath him.

"What?" Rodney murmurs, stiffening against him.

"Shhhh," John whispers, pressing his forehead to the over-warm skin at the back of Rodney's neck. He slips a hand to rest over Rodney's stomach, and extends a shield around him for the second time that day.


End file.
